Tag Archives: Captain Cook

Today I’m visiting Queen Square, built in the first decades of the 18th century and named for Queen Anne. The first image shows it in 1786 in a painting by Edward Dayes. [Yale Center for British Art. Public domain image, US]. This is the view from the south.

The second image is from Ackermann’s Repository for September 1812 and the artist is standing in Guilford Street on the northern, open edge.

Now there are buildings on the plot of land enclosed by the iron railings but, according to the text with this print, The north side formerly commanded fine views of Hampstead and Highgate. This view can be clearly seen in the Dayes painting and on Roque’s map of 1738 with, to the north-east, Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital. Fanny Burney, the novelist, playwright and diarist, lived in the square 1771/2 with her father and wrote of, A beautiful prospect of the hills ever verdant of Hampstead and Highgate. Dr Burney was visited here by Captain James Cook, just before his second voyage.

By the time of the 1812 print, Richard Horwood’s map (below) shows the extensive development over what had been Lamb’s Conduit Fields to the north and the private garden in the foreground of the image. Originally the site was an ancient reservoir, part of the waterways that formed the water source for Lamb’s Conduit and which supplied water to the Greyfriars in Newgate Street. If you look at the paved area at the southern end on StreetView you can see a black iron water pump, the late Victorian replacement for the original, which taps into the same source.

Number 31 (east side), now replaced by the Royal Homeopathic Hospital, was a school for young ladies, sometimes referred to as “the ladies’ Eton”. Deportment was clearly of great importance and the young ladies would travel by coach to attend the church of St George the Martyr, just a few metres away on the south-west end of the square. This meant they could practice getting in and out of a carriage in the correct manner and, according to the London Encyclopedia, when the carriage became too ancient to move it was installed in one of the schoolrooms so they could use it there.

St George the Martyr was built at the same time as the square as a chapel of ease, a subsidiary of St Andrew, Holborn. As London expanded these chapels sprang up in all the fashionable new developments and this one was created when (to quote Ackermann’s) several of those who resided at the extremity of the parish [of St Andrew] having proposed to erect a chapel for religious worship,Sir Streynsham Master [a prominent member of the East India Company] and fourteen other gentlemen were appointed trustees for the management of the building. Along with two houses it cost £3,500 and it was intended to recoup the cost by the sale of pews. However, by 1733 the density of new building was such that a new parish was created and the church, bought from the trustees, was named St George’s in honour of Master’s governorship of Fort St George in Madras (Chennai). Originally it was a plain brick building without steeple, and destitute of any pretensions to elegance, though convenient and well lighted. It was remodeled twice in the 19th century, a bell tower was added and the original exterior brickwork covered up, presumably adding some much-needed elegance. The 1786 painting at the head of this post shows the church in its original brick in the left foreground.

When George III first became unwell in 1788 he stayed for a short time in Queen Square with Doctor Willis before being treated at the White House at Kew. The King’s apparent recovery made Willis famous, fashionable and rich. Coincidentally, the statue of George’s wife, Queen Charlotte, that still stands in the square, was erected about 1775.